Admire Exceptional Breguet Classique 5717 Hora Mundi Watch

Saturday, May 21, 2011

At Baselworld 2011, Breguet unveiled its new Classique 5717 Hora Mundi watch. It follows the steps of the first Hora Mundi watch born in 1996.

The novelty is sculptured from 18K red gold or 950 platinum and demonstrates exceptional finishes. It catches the glance by its translucent lacquered dial. The dial shows off hours, minutes and seconds with help of central hands. The date is presented at 12 o’clock, while the city or time-zone indicator is at 6 o’clock. The large day/night display is featured between 3 and 4 o’clock.

The dial of the new Breguet watch has been created in three variations, each depicting one part of the world: the Americas, the European and African continents, or Asia and Oceania.

The complicated Breguet watch represents the first mechanical timepiece that boasts an instant-jump time-zone display with synchronized date, day/night and city indications. Due to this function, the watch shows the time in two pre-selected time zones (from among the cities listed for the 24 time zones) and the watch wearer can instantly change from one time zone to the other pressing the combined crown/pushpiece at 8 o’clock. The accurate operation of the watch is not disturbed due to a stop second system. As for the date, it gets synchronized with help of a “tracking” calendar system.

The Breguet Classique 5717 Hora Mundi watch is also special due to its highly original date display that incorporates a dragging disc. It is presented via a window at 12 o’clock. The window shows three consecutive dates at once. To make the date reading as clear as possible, the dragging calendar system has been fitted with a tiny retrograde hand that is found beneath the dial and has in a small circle at its tip.

The circle frames the today’s date the moment it appears at the left side of the window, and until it disappears at the right. At midnight, the tiny hand jumps back to the left side to frame the date of the beginning day.

The heart of the new Hora Mundi watch is the 5717 self-winding mechanical movement. The 43-jewel mechanism is based on Calibre 777. The remarkable mechanism boasts four patent-pending features:
for a watch with a mechanism with two time zones;
for the display of a time zone on demand via the main set of hands;
for a programmable and reprogrammable mechanical memory wheel for a watch;
for a mechanism for displaying a temporal dimension with help of a dragging hand.
The 44 mm case of the new Breguet watch is 30-meter water-resistant. The case construction incorporates a thin, rounded bezel, a middle part with fluted sides, added soldered strap lugs and a sapphire crystal case-back.